Interviewing

For this assignment I decided to use one of the questions given to us, as I felt it was of some relevance.

“How have students dress sense changed since they left home?”

Taking this question and keeping it in mind, I expanded on it. While doing so I realized that what I was suggesting related a lot to the research I have already done. This would hopefully help me link the two together.

Leaving home myself I could relate a lot to this question as I feel my own style has developed over the two years of being at university. I guess from being in the company of many individuals around the same age, you become a lot more aware of how you look and come across to people. This for me was due to the need for good first impressions, and so you want people to remember you for good reasons, one being our outer appearance.

When I first started this brainstorming session, I made a mind map demonstrating the breakdown of each heading and my initial thoughts about the topic. By doing this it allowed me to broaden my thought process. As you can see I tried to quickly achieve a random selection of explanations to suit my question, this hopefully influencing my chose. The why, the constraints and the influences of this change were the most obvious categories to separate the information into. From this I thought that the most obvious people to interview were students and teachers, especially art students, who tend to be more expressive and daring when it comes to their clothing. What I wanted to achieve from this was?? I deliberated for a while on what type of questions would I ask and what would come from each as a result.

The first person I interviewed was an architecture student and still classified as a older “teenager” so from this I would be able to target the two areas at once. I asked each person the same number of questions so I had a good selection of questions among the interviewees. I tried not to ask the direct question but base them on ones that could relate in some way. I found at first, when I asked questions the conversation took a while to flow. The basic answers resulting in no or yes. This may have been due to the way in which I asked my questions or the questions I asked might not have been in-depth enough to give a detailed response. The interviewee might have been nervous and so took a while to expand on her answers. From listening and then collating the information the overall response was more to do with the surrounding environment and how since leaving home and living at university she doesn’t feel intimidated by others and the way others perceive her. University for her is an environment where she can just be herself. She believes a lot of people who’s clothing does change or adapt are usually insecure and try and fit in with others. When I asked if she thinks that a person’s course has a lot to do with it, her reply was yes. She justified this by comparing days where she may be busy or stressed to others and she really doesn’t

The second person I then interviewed was still at school, in her second last year. She was a “sweet sixteen” so her views would be different compared to the older teen. I then used the results from my first interview to decide the order in which the second lot of questions would be asked. The idea of the environment creating different outcomes was quite interesting for me since my full topic relates to surrounding environments. So I felt the issue to do with not living at home and having more independence would hopefully give me answers that would address the question. I highlighted the fact that this could be because the parents overlooked on what they were doing and so had less freedom of choice. “Do you think this has something to do with the parents?” This was the way in which I phrased the question, getting straight to the point. “Sometimes, if they were to dress for example slutty then their parents would disapprove and so would ask them to change.” I then developed it further and asked what she felt was her main influence, thus hopefully targeting the main cause of change within an outward appearance. She opened up a lot more from this and continued to expand on the questions without my need to encourage the conversation. Magazines, adverts, since she is tall she also compares her physic to that of others her type and looks at how they use this to their advantage. Key similarities that I noticed between most of my interviewees was how they believe that people dress, is mainly down to their inner confidence and that most people don’t have this and so copy others, thus creating “trends”. They look at how others are going to perceive them and so are constantly aware of what others will think. I know myself that this is one of the reasons why I doubt some pieces of clothing and debate whether to buy them or not. Again this relates to the outside environment and the pressure that comes with “fitting in”.

The last person I interviewed was another older teen. This interviewee has travelled a lot in her lifetime and experienced a lot of different cultures so it was interesting to see how she would react to this. From being exposed to different cultures I wanted to know if she was at all influenced by this or from leaving home and coming to university and if it affected her style. I asked her if she thought her style had changed and if she could explain. “ Nope its not changed but its developed” This I thought was a very honest answer and is true for a lot of people, because as you get older what you thought looked good before may not suite your style now. She then went on to explain how when she was at home she had to wear uniform to school everyday so wasn’t allowed to wear normal clothes during weekdays like she can now what with being at university. She then explained how she is has become more experimental with her clothing because she has to consider what to wear everyday.

From this I also asked whether this brought with it, its own pressure to dress as well as others, but her response was no again. She believed that she felt it a lot less pressure here than she did at back home in Shanghai, which I thought was interesting. She feels more accepted here because everyone is from different cultures, races and ages. One question that I didn’t ask the others was whether she like to shop on her own or as the typical image within a group.” Definitely with people need some advice and second opinions” Although this person seems very comfortable with what she wears and doesn’t feel the pressure to fit in, the answer given makes her sound rather insecure when buying clothing and although she says she doesn’t do it to fit in, she subconsciously does. Getting back to the question itself she doesn’t believe this is true as it has made no difference to her style.

Overall from doing this interview process, its been interesting to see how the answers do not all agree. They were all aware that certain environments do have some influence on your outwards appearance. From looking at others your own age and magazines and adverts can subconsciously influence your taste and just like my last interviewee, everyone at some points wants to dress to fit in. If I was to use this method in the future I would to expand on my area and interview more people to broaden my results. I would maybe also discuss my questions before hand to see how I could achieve the results I want.